Quantal Alpha-1 includes the 3.4.0-5.11 Ubuntu kernel which was based on the final v3.4 upstream Linux kernel. This is an update from the 3.2.0-23.36 Ubuntu kernel which shipped in Precise Pangolin 12.04 and was based on the v3.2 upstream Linux kernel. Other notable changes with the Quantal Alpha-1 kernel include the transitioning of the i386 generic-pae flavor to become the generic flavor offering, collapsing of the virtual flavor back into the generic flavor, and homogenizing the entire linux-meta package. We also see the arrival of a new highbank arm server kernel flavor.

For 12.10, we intend to ship only Python 3 with the Ubuntu desktop image, not Python 2. Alpha-1 begins this process, with the installer and some other applications ported to Python 3. There are still quite a few packages left to port, and so Python 2 and 3 are both installed for the time being.